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Author Archives: Bruce Geryk
The battle of the balance of the Battle of the Bulge
Balance is like the reverse of pornography: everyone can give you a definition, but no one seems to be able to know when they see it. Oh sure, they think they know. Plenty of people will tell you that this … Continue reading
What’s the deal with…Eupen in Battle of the Bulge?
With so much die rolling in Battle of the Bulge, you’re bound to hear a number of complaints when things don’t go someone’s way. It’s the case with any game where you roll dice, and you can make an argument … Continue reading
Playing the odds in Battle of the Bulge’s Bastogne conundrum
A long time ago, strategy articles about boardgames went through an extensive process to get to you. First, they had to be typed. Diagrams had to be mocked up. They then had to be mailed to an editor, who put … Continue reading
War in the East: break down, go ahead and give it to me
I’m not quite sure exactly what it is about wargames that befuddles people. Something about NATO symbology* which translates armored units into rectangles with ovals in them. Or hexagons. I know some people don’t like hexagons. Although Neuroshima Hex has … Continue reading
John Butterfield’s Battle of the Bulge rejuvenates an old rogue
A very accomplished game designer once told me his best ideas were mostly borrowed, but that he made them his own in the way he arranged and adapted them to a setting. Part of good design, he said, is knowing … Continue reading
War in the East: chess piece face
By now we’re at the fourth installment in this new War in the East series, and you’re probably wondering if I’m ever going to attack another hex, or if I’m going to just keep going to my closet and pulling … Continue reading
War in the East: a question of scale
Before we can get to the fight for Stalingrad or whatnot, there is the small question of Sevastopol. This naval base on the Crimean peninsula, famous as the site of the focus of the Crimean War in 1855, was the … Continue reading
War in the East: fellowship of the panzer
When you start watching The Two Towers, you get a little reminder of important stuff that happened earlier, like the wizard who fell off the bridge fighting the flaming minotaur. It’s an integral part of the Lord of the Rings, … Continue reading
War in the East: weird twilight
It was often said in the Stalingrad pocket that it was better to have a cousin in the Luftwaffe than a Father in Heaven. –Heinz Schroter Seventy years ago this month, in a place between the Don and Volga Rivers, … Continue reading
Mapping the extremes in online worlds and olden times
I was walking around in a local bookstore this weekend. The kind that has a cat, and you pet the cat, and then browse for books, and then you think that there isn’t anything interesting here but you can always … Continue reading
In Phantom Leader, some day this war’s gonna end
Years ago, every boardgame was a solitaire game. I know that because I played a lot of them solitaire. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there weren’t a lot of ways to play board wargames against someone else unless … Continue reading
If you stare into the Andean Abyss
The argument about whether or not games are art is often just a plea for games not to be ridiculed, and instead to be treated as serious endeavors. I usually avoid it, because I think it’s a misplaced argument, and … Continue reading
An even-numbered roll in Titan HD! My kingdom for an even-number roll!
If it’s possible for someone to have a patron game, like they have patron saints or patronage at city hall or something, mine would be Titan. No other game has watched over my journey from adolescent nerd to middle-aged geek … Continue reading
It’s a Man Ray kind of sky
Gamers have such a skill for self-loathing that I sometimes think it’s some kind of Xbox achievement. I see this in game writing all the time. After the jump, gamers should grow some stones
Eagle Day: winning the National Socialist booby prize
The problem with History is that you can’t just go back and see what would have happened if someone had made some different decisions. The problem with wargames is that you can. After the jump, what a difference a heavy … Continue reading